A Transfeminist Theology Manifesto
Queer, Feminist, and Christocentric
Rosemary Radford Ruether famously posed perhaps the most important question at the heart of feminist Christian theology: “Can a male savior save women?” We might ask this question in the register of the patristic axiom “what is not assumed is not healed,” such that women cannot be saved if God assumed the form of a man, but not of a woman. What may be at issue is that Jesus’ teachings cannot speak to women, because he lacks the experience that would allow him to make them relevant to women’s lives. These and other questions of relevance lie at the heart of feminist theology in the Christian tradition.
Trans-feminism, however, provides an internal challenge for feminist thought, such that transfeminist theology cannot approach Ruether’s question in some conventional ways.
Transfeminist theology, being trans, will be queer theology. It will arise from the blurring of those boundaries our culture takes for granted: the boundaries of oppositional sexism, which Julia Serano defines as “the belief that female and male are rigid, mutually exclusive categories, each possessing a unique and nonoverlapping set of attributes, aptitudes, abilities, and desires.”1 This assumption lying behind certain strains of feminism that men and women are eternally different is absolutely rejected, and the axiom that a “male” Jesus has failed to assume the “female” will thereby be dismissed. Transfeminist theology will not posit any metaphysical divide between women and the Savior. Indeed, it will freely be able to observe and embrace the un-masculine behaviors of the historical Jesus, such as his failure to marry and his close relationships with women, such that his social isolation from the practical lives of women need not be granted.
Transfeminist theology, however, will not be merely trans theology or queer theology. It will also be feminist theology. Transfeminism breaks with the universalizing tendency of queer theory to blur the differences between people to the point of concealing the particular struggles of trans women and transfems. As Serano writes,
We are ridiculed and dismissed not merely because we “transgress binary gender norms,” as many transgender activists and gender theorists have proposed, but rather because we “choose” to be women rather than men. The fact that we identify and live as women, despite being born male and having inherited male privilege, challenges those in our society who wish to glorify maleness and masculinity, as well as those who frame the struggles faced by other women and queers solely in terms of male and heterosexual privilege.2
Transfeminist theology will recognize the common struggle with other queer people without ignoring this particular burden placed on us by our society, this burden of transmisogyny. We will do theology from our own standpoint without diplomatic generality. We will analyze and criticize transmisogyny boldly as the problem out of which we theologize. Countering oppositional sexism is not enough to combat traditional sexism, “the belief that maleness and masculinity are superior to femaleness and femininity.”3 We may not equivocate these dimensions of sexism and transfeminist theology will not compromise itself by doing so. If our feminism puts the transfeminist theologian in a tense position with respect to other queer theologians, as our queerness with respect to other feminist theologians, we still will not compromise.
Transfeminist theology will be christocentric theology. The transfeminist theologian will see in the divine and human life of Jesus, the eternal process of Incarnation, a special affinity to trans women and transfems, as liberation theologians see all the oppressed. In the Incarnation, Jesus gives up the divine power and aseity that have so often been marked as masculine; a kenosis that in him is ridiculed as the giving up of masculinity is mocked in trans women. The linking of the Incarnation to transfeminist concerns will not be an issue of metaphor-making or free association. It will be a description of the facts, a preaching of the Gospel, an attempt to name reality as God has professed it in His “coming out” as transfeminine. We need not manufacture the positive relevance of a “male” savior to our lives and thus the lives of all women. We will observe the relevance and proclaim it.
The transfeminist theology of tomorrow will be queer, feminist, and christocentric. It will stand in these dimensions without remorse or compromise. Any given transfeminist theologian will stand in their own ways, with their own theoretical resources. Here, however, they will stand.
Julia Serano, Whipping Girl, “Trans Woman Manifesto,” 13.
Serano, Whipping Girl, “Introduction,” 4
Serano, Whipping Girl, “Trans Woman Manifesto,” 14.